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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Daniela Sánchez

Surgery and Salvation. The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico 1770-1940 (2023).

October 4, 2025

book cover surgery and salvation

In Surgery and Salvation, O’Brien traces the history of reproductive injustice in Mexico, taking a longue durée approach extending from the late colonial period through post-revolutionary state formation. She focuses on reproductive surgeries and how women’s bodies—particularly those of poor and Indigenous women—became laboratories for medical experimentation, religious morality, and eugenic population control.  Much historical scholarship on reproductive control […]

Bearing the Nation: Eugenics and Contentious Feminism in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

February 17, 2023

We need new men, normal children, strong workers, and loyal soldiers . . . , and much of this can be achieved by cultivating Mexican women, showing them horizons that they have not contemplated. -Dr. Carmen Alarcón, 1942[1] In 1922, socialist feminists such as Elvia Carrillo Puerto and Esperanza Velázquez Bringas organized eugenic campaigns promoting […]

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